Welcome to the Church of Humanism Blog

Here, as often as possible, the church founder Rev. Joseph Ben-David or other church members will comment on relevant topics of the day. You are all welcome to join in on the conversation by emailing your thoughts and opinons to the email address shown below. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Published: Saturday, 18 April 2015 09:00

Written by Joesph Ben-David

Welcome to the new website of the Church of Humanism (COH). The purpose of this new website and this blog is to provide tools to further the philosophy and mission of ther COH by extending our reach and our access in the exciting sphere of online communications. In this changing online environment, however, our focus and our core purposes remain unchanged:

Founded in New York State in 1973, our 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization is dedicated to the advancement of a naturalistic, rational, humanistic religion.We affirm a concept of God as ideal reality. It is based on the synthesis of the ideas of the great humanistic philosophers, psychologists and theologians, such as Martin Buber, Erich Fromm, Hannah Arendt, Bertrand Russell, Germaine Greer, Abraham Maslow, and others.It is working to create a community of spirit and action, guided by the principles of honest search for truth, the struggle for justice and peace, and the fullest development of the human potential, in both the individual and social sense.

The programs of the church, and its division the Humanist Foundation, during their 41 years of existence, have consisted of such activities as: humanist services, lectures, discussions, human potential workshops, a mobile soup kitchen, participation in UN meetings on peace in the Middle East, demonstrations for human and animal rights, conducting of weddings and funerals, and in providing ethical counseling and personal support. Our theological seminary has held seven classroom-based, three-semester-long, intensive leadership training programs, which have been successfully completed by 10 ordained ministers, 13 counselors, and 26 leaders.

Primary purposes of these programs and activities are:

To develop our deeper understanding, love and service of God through one's positive response to life's challenges, and to fulfill one’s unique human destiny;

To cultivate rationality, love and intuition within each person and assist in the fullest development of his or her human potential as a prerequisite for realizing authentic humanist identity;

To identify with all human beings and to enhance human development through personal character strength, relatedness, and the application of the concepts of theocentric humanism;

To appoint humanist pastoral care assistants to visit hospitals, jails and other institutions to aid the needy;

To train and certify humanist leaders and counselors to bring credit, relevancy and vitality to the humanist religious movement;

To ordain ministers and reverends to promulgate the teachings of theocentric humanism and to perform ecclesiastical duties.

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Dear Reader,

None of the materials, books, essays or lectures should be read or accepted uncritically, nor should any one of them be considered an authoritative and dogmatically binding thesis representing a humanist doctrine. We do not want "followers"; or "true believers"; but freethinking partners in a great spiritual enterprise.